Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items ca waste system resources. To optimize: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. a. b. c. d. e. 7.
Click the Start button
Select Control Panel Double-click the System icon Click the Advanced tab In the Performance box click Settings Leave only the following ticked: Show shadows under menus Show shadows under mouse pointer Show translucent selection rectangle Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop Use visual styles on windows and buttons Finally, click Apply and OK
XP Speed Secret #4: Speed-Up File Browsing
You may have noticed that every time you open My Computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers every time you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing speed significantly: 1. Double-click on My Computer 2. Click the Tools menu 3. Select Folder Options 4. Click on the View tab. 5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box 6. Click Apply 7. Click OK 8. Reboot your computer
XP Speed Secret #5: Reduce Page File Size
Page file size is not constant by default. Due to this, the operating system has to resize the file each time more space is required. This is a performance overhead. All you have to do is to set the file size to a reasonable limit. Follow the steps: 1. Right-click My Computer, Select Properties 2. Click the Advanced tab 3. Click the Settings button under the Performance section 4. Click the Advanced tab 5. Under the Virtual Memory section click the Change button 6. "Virtual Memory"
dialogue box will appear
(also shown in the figure below) 7. Highlight the C: drive containing page file 8. Select the Custom Size radio button and give same values in Initial size and Maximum size fields: If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size. 9. Click Set, then OK buttons to apply the changes
XP Speed Secret #8: Enable Direct Memory
Access (DMA) 1. Right-click on My Computer, select Properties 2. Select the Hardware tab 3. Click the Device Manager button 4. Double-click IDE/ATAPI controllers 5. Double-click on the Primary IDE Channel 6. Click on the Advanced Settings tab (as shown in figure) The tab may or may not be available for each option. It is only available in Primary and Secondary Channels. 7. Set the Transfer Mode to "DMA if Available" both for Device 1 and 0 8. Click OK 9. Perform the same operation for other items in the list, if applicable.
XP Speed Secret #9: Disable File Indexing
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of memory and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don t search your computer often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following: 1. Click Start button 2. Select the Control Panel 3. Double-click Add/Remove Programs 4. Click the Add/Remove Window Components icon on the left side of the window 5. This may take a few seconds to load. Be patient. 6. Look for the Indexing Services component in the list 7. Uncheck the Indexing Services